Tom Watts

Tom is the proud Owner of Top Shelf Media in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He's a seasoned blogger who writes about all things related to online marketing, web design and SEO. Feel free to ask him anything!

Finding blogs that accept guest posts is by far the hardest part of the guest blogging process. Guest posting can be a great tool for new bloggers and website owners trying to find their footing, and for those looking to garner a few extra links for search engine optimization. Guest posting as a great way to earn…

SEO should be at the forefront of your website’s traffic building strategy. Backlinking is extremely important in SEO, and so you may be wondering; what is backlinking, and how should you do it. Organic search is one of the few ways to get good traffic for free – however, it probably takes the most work of any of…

Last Friday morning I received an email from Andrew. This email was very much like any other many of us receive on what seems like an almost hourly basis. A shameless attempt at getting a link shared for SEO because “your readers would really enjoy it” without any real benefit to you. The funny part is…

Time is money, seriously. Page load times are a BIG DEAL. If anything, page load speed should be at the top of your list when it comes to optimizing your website. Studies show that the longer your page takes to load, the more likely your new visitor is to abandon it. And rightly so! I…

Recently I was hanging out in one of my favorite Facebook groups for web design, and there was someone in there having trouble finding information on what image sizes they needed for their site. Here’s the question: TLDR: “If there’s a 1600px wide slot, do I have to use a 1600px wide image to fill…

Tell any web designer ‘just make me a website,’ and you’ll be met by a blank stare. You might as well tell a realtor to just go buy you a house. You’ll end up with an apartment for your five-kids-and-growing family. Nothing will fit, and nobody will be happy. A blanket request never works. Instead,…

At the best of times SEO can seem like black magic sprinkled on websites by witch doctor-like designers. The idea is simple– to rank better with search engines – but the methods are often debated and constantly changing, which is why business owners spend money on SEO experts to spread their voodoo on their websites….

The Key to SEO friendly content We usually abandon a website in around 10-20 seconds. That’s around 30-60 words per minute for the average reader. But, if we stay on for more than 30 seconds we’re much more likely to hang around to see what the site is selling. But how does that relate to…

According to Google, 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal. Sometimes that’s sequential use, and sometimes it’s simultaneous, regardless, the screens on these devices are rarely the same size – that’s where responsive web design comes in. Furthermore, not all screens work in the same formats – landscape, portrait, or even square….

In this article I’m going to go through all the questions to ask a web designer before hiring them. I often see people getting ripped off or not quite getting what they’d expect from their web designer. They get a decent website built for them, only to find out it’s missing some key features down…